Eastern lowland gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the land species worst hit by the global decline in wildlife. (Photo: Reuters)

Andrew Terry, director of conservation and policy at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), said that the serious drop tells us that nature is unraveling and the natural world is emptying.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, which used 2018 data from ZSL on the status of 32,000 wildlife populations covering more than 5,000 species, found that population sizes had declined by 69% on average. Deforestation, human exploitation, pollution, and climate change were the biggest drivers of the loss.

Its findings were broadly similar to those in WWF's last assessment in 2020, with wildlife population sizes continuing to decline at a rate of about 2.5% per year.